


the manolia quandary

by discopolice



Category: Wakfu
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-07 03:07:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1882797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/discopolice/pseuds/discopolice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set seventeen years after the events of the manga: Yugo is a king, Chibi and Grougal are teenagers, their friends include a kleptomaniac and a Iop, and the lost Goddess Eliatrope is caught in a spacetime trap. In another world, ten thousand children have just lost their dragon teacher.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> updated maybe when I feel like it I guess

_a rose whose petals fall, one by one, against a stone floor_

_five flowers of wakfu entangle it,_

_five flowers that one by one wilt._

_what they leave behind is a crystal new order_

_twelve clasped hands that overwhelm ten thousand._

_but soon, those twelve will blink out just the same._

_‘my child, I show you only what I know’_

_‘and I grow weaker by the day;’_

_‘you have home with me, so’_

_‘show me, now, that I have home with you.’_

\---

The Black Crow’s helmet is still a bit too big for Katrina – if the buckles aren’t tightened to their absolute limit, it slumps down her face and turns into a sad metal mask – but she’s growing into it, Kabrok thinks. At seventeen, she certainly _should_ be. Osamodas are naturally light and lithe things, though, and Katrina (with her tiny wrists and sharp cheekbones) even more so; he’s not sure, though, if that’s his fatherly instinct warping his vision.

She’s been going on her own flights for a year, every time coming back with more treasures for the shop than Kabrok ever did, but he still sees the same little girl she was when she was ten.

This time, she throws the door open in her usual way, lets the spring air float in, to an excitable Snoofle bopping at her legs and a couple of unexpected visitors. Her eyes sparkle through the beak of her helmet even as she struggles to yank it from her head.

“Elely! Running errands again?” Of course, the Iop girl is where her eyes flicker first. Elely has always been stocky, but her figure has filled out in recent years, firm muscle barely visible against soft curves; she’s the vision of raw _power_ that Katrina has never been. More than that, though, Katrina sees Iop-ish mischief and excitement across her lips, dumb cockiness in her posture. At the least, she takes after her father in _something._

“Same as you,” she says. “Papa said some things to the map that he didn’t want to hear, and now…”

“And now mama’s _pissed_ ,” Kabrok mutters with a sympathetic wince. The tube in Elely’s hands emits a high, dissatisfied grumble that Katrina thinks may mean something in some long-lost language, but the Iop mutes it by smacking it against the wall.

“You can’t get Uncle Yugo to fix it? He _is_ the map’s guardian,” Katrina says. Yugo is neither her blood relative nor Elely’s, possibly owing to the fact that he’s ‘King of the Weird Aliens’ (as Elely says), but the man in the blue hat is family friend enough to be referred to as such.

“He’s out. Away. Said he needed to think about King Alien things.”

“Having trouble with the map again?” The lock turns from the back-room, and out saunters a curvy Ecaflip, otherwise known as ‘Miranda, sweet wife of Kabrok, mother of the heiress to the Black Crow’s throne.’  She holds out a carefully-manicured hand to Elely, and the tube lets out a tiny whimper. “Give.”

Elely complies, and Miranda ducks back into her stockroom. Shortly after, there’s a series of high-pitched shrieks; Katrina ignores it and resumes hanging up her armor in neat lines on the wall. She knows how terrifying her mother can be.

“Alien things, huh?” she asks, and Elely nods. “Is that why we haven’t seen Chibi lately?”

“Nah,” Elely says. “He took Mina and Phaeris, though. Chibi’s sulking somewhere, because Yugo's holding that cube thing hostage. You know, the one they won’t let us near? Something about it being really old, and really dangerous, and one time Qilby tried to touch it and Yugo beat his ass. Speaking of him, he’s off doing, uh.” A beat of awkward pause. “Whatever Qilbies do.”

“Science? Being a massive weirdo?”

“Yeah, that.”

 ---

Chibi digs his toes into the wet soil by the riverbank, drags them towards the water, takes them back out. He is propped on the heels of his palms, leaning back to gaze towards a canopy of leaves and dark clouds. This is his favorite kind of day, after all: just on the brink of raining, but not quite, the calm before a great storm that takes Amakna into its grey embrace. 

Beside him is a lanky black dragon, stretched out on his back, resting in a sunbeam. His tail waves in an arc against the dirt, back and forth, back and forth; the way he twitches would look lazy to anyone else, but Chibi knows it’s the way Grougal fidgets when he’s nervous about something. Said nerves are from a dream, the same one that’s tugging at the back of Chibi’s brain.

“You said someone was talking to you?” Grougaloragran's voice is too deep, too gravelly for a boy his age, but maybe being a dragon has something to do with that. Granted, on the Krosmic scale, he knows he's only a  _dragonet._  (The very idea of having lived for over ten thousand years without his brother terrifies him, if he's being honest. Chibi's like a third arm with its own mind: everpresent, sometimes annoying, but part of him.)

"Yeah," Chibi says. "She was this really powerful woman, made out of wakfu, who touched me while I slept--"

"You can stop there," Grougal deadpans.

"On the  _cheek_ , Grougal. And then it felt like I was being lifted into the sky, and I saw the whole universe, just this huge  _egg_ filling up with purple. That's when she told me she needed my help, that she was... Trapped. She said things aren't as they should be."

"You know, this could be like any other dream." Grougal, ever the skeptic, looks to Chibi with a raised eyebrow. "What makes you think you are not making up a wakfu woman in your sleep?"

"I  _remember_ it, like it really happened! I can still feel her breath on my face!" The white-haired boy's voice urgently raises. "I just... I  _never_ remember my dreams like that, you know that. I feel like it's important, something's  _telling_ me--"

"Alright, alright," Grougal says. "I know better than to question your instincts, but... What is there to do about it, except wait?" He sits up and crosses his legs neatly. "If it means something, maybe she will come back to you again. Did she give you a name?"

"No," Chibi says, "but it's like I've known her for years. If only I could _remember_ the name... She called me 'her child.' What in the stars does that even _mean?_ "

"If this is a past-life matter, we should tread carefully. We only know so much of our story."

"Do you think we should tell Yugo--"

"I do not know if that's a good idea," Grougal cuts in. "He is more trustworthy than anyone, but he has too much on his plate at the moment. We should ask him what he knows of the Eliatropes, and that's it. Then..." He pauses to stroke his beard for a moment and press his lips into a pensive line. "Maybe, then, we can do some research on our own - about who this woman is, and about who _we_ are."

"Research?" And Chibi, on cue, immediately perks up with a mischievous glimmer in his grin. When he meets Grougal's eyes, he sees the same glimmer, reflected back at him. 

" _Research._ "

\---

"So I  _overheard_ , and don't quote me on this," Elely whispers, "that there are some alien kids in another dimension. I think that's what he took Preachy and Phaeris to talk about."

"I don't know why you keep calling her that. I mean, she doesn't seem  _that_ bad. And Phaeris taught me his super-secret techniques for building upper body strength-" Katrina flexes to show off her sad mockery of biceps- "so that's cool, right?"

"Phaeris is whatever, but I mean, have you  _listened_ to Preachy lately?" Elely screws up her face in disgust. "She's such a goody-two-shoes, never wants to get into  _any_ trouble."

"Wait, did you say  _alien kids?_ " Katrina says. "How many?"

"I was waiting for you to ask about that," Elely says, then starts to count on her fingers and mutter. "One, two, three..." She exhausts nine of her fingers before she looks up at Katrina again. "Uh, like, ten thousand?"

Katrina deadpans: "And you're  _sure_ you're not just counting wrong."

"Totally sure. I mean, I could have  _heard_ wrong, maybe? That's a lot of kids."

"No shit," Katrina says. 

An eye at Elely's back, cut into the hilt of one of the two longswords strapped there, chooses that moment to blink open. Its twin in the other longsword isn't long after. Elely's never known whether these shushus were two separate related entities, or one split into two swords and two streams of thought; all she knows is that the one named Emerik sounds like a guy, and the one named Gaetane sounds like a girl, and sometimes (rarely) they stop arguing long enough to try and get into her body. She's heard that the moment someone tried to separate them more than ten yards, they went dead. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what they are, as long as they can whack things.

"Twenty thousand grubby little hands," Emerik whines from behind Elely. Katrina slides her forehead into her palm; can't she go two seconds talking to her best friend without her swords trying to cut in?

"Twenty thousand grubby, useful little  _Eliatrope_ hands," Gaetane retorts. "You really ought to think about our bottom line here.  _Elelyyy?_ Mind doing us a favor?"

"Later," Elely says.

"You're completely useless, you never want to act when we need it--  _aiiie!_ " Elely reaches behind herself and sticks an index finger in each eye, effectively ending the conversation. Still, the two shushus listen intently.

"So, these kids," Katrina says. "Do you know what they're going to do with them? Just... leave them there to die?"

" _Can_ the aliens ever die?" Elely asks, and Katrina has to look into her eyes to make sure it's a genuine question. (It is, and Katrina wants to slap herself on the forehead.)

"Well, they died  _somehow!_ I mean, they're clearly not  _here,_ are they? I mean, except for the ones that are, but--"

Their discussion is cut off by the frantic whack of the front door against its hinges.


	2. history

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads-up: this is AU'ed! so, you know, all that business with Ogrest didn't end the way it did in the OVAs - it ended in retreat.

The door of the shop whacks open so quickly that even the bells hung on it take a moment to jingle; Katrina whips her head around and yells “Mama! Customer!” Miranda peeks her head out with a predatory grin across her face.

It’s not a customer. A young man is bent over in the doorway, one hand on his knee, panting heavily; he must have run all the way here. He’s a lanky, thin fellow, and looks fast enough, but perhaps not entirely in shape. A white, long-horned hat droops over his head, and long brown hair hangs from its sides; there’s scruff at the point of his jaw, but not enough to be called a ‘beard.’

“The weirdo cometh,” Elely whispers to Katrina, who giggles helplessly into her shoulder. (The weirdo, under normal circumstances, would give them a look; right now, though, he’s thinking about something else.) Miranda pouts at her daughter.

“You told me it was a customer,” she says, slinking back into her stockroom to continue with Whatever She’s Doing.

“Sorry, mama. So, Qilby, what in the hell’s got you all worked up?”

“Rozens. By… the Zinit. Tons of them. I don’t… I don’t know what’s… going on,” Qilby huffs. Katrina looks down at his other hand to see a pair of forceps gripped in it, delicately holding a purple flower by its stem. The thing’s glowing, which itself sends a shiver down Katrina’s spine, but Elely doesn’t seem deterred.

In fact, she’s reaching out to touch the thing with an outstretched finger. Qilby reels back, right back out the door with eyes wide, yelling “no, no, _don’t_ —“ but Elely roughly brushes against it—

The flower explodes in the forceps, petal after petal, and it’s not big but it’s enough to make the door rattle on its hinges. Elely jumps back with a high-pitched scream.

“Don’t touch it,” Qilby says, witheringly.

“Well, you should have told me!”

A loud “I _tried_!” from the boy comes at the same time as a “He _tried_!” from the girl.

“Tell me faster!” Elely says.

“Anyway,” Qilby says, and the rough, rumbly tone Elely once dubbed his “Leader Voice” comes out deep as a sixteen-year-old can manage it. “There’s that part of it. What I don’t understand is why they’re growing by the Zinit in such numbers.”

“Okay, some bomb flowers are growing,” Elely pipes up. “Why are you being so weird about this?”

“Great Osamodas, it smells like you sprayed rosewater on a corpse,” Katrina adds.

Elely whispers to the side, “How do you know what a corpse smells like?”

“I live with my mother, working the family business,” Katrina says. Elely cringes and doesn’t press further.

Qilby sighs and rests his forehead (sticky with sweat, ew) on his palm. “You don’t know what stasis is?”

“No,” the girls answer in unison.

“Goddess, I have some work to do,” he says. “Is there a place to sit down in here?”

\---

The three end up in Katrina’s bedroom, all spread out. Rather, Qilby’s spread out, sitting cross-legged on the floor opposite the bed; Elely’s splayed on the bed, affectionately sniffing the pillow, and Katrina’s sitting at her feet rolling her eyes.

“Smells like your shampoo, and—“

“ _About Stasis_ ,” Qilby says, clearing his throat less than delicately. “You all know of Wakfu, yes? Stasis is, in some ways, its opposite. Chibi once called Wakfu the Goddess’ ‘ever-flowing mane,’ or ‘the veil in which all living things are enveloped.’”

“Gay,” Elely says, and Qilby has to snort back a barking laugh.

“If only,” he says, and Katrina wants to ask him what in the hell that means, but he keeps talking before she can. “Stasis is its logical opposite – descended from the Great Dragon, it is the stilled energy of destruction. Stilled Wakfu turns to Stasis, and exploded Stasis returns to Wakfu. In this way, everything remains in balance.”

“The Great Dragon? You’re acting like we know these things,” Katrina says.

“You haven’t heard the story of the world’s creation?” Qilby asks, and gets a resounding ‘no.’ “Well, it starts like this: In the beginning, there was nothing: only the Great Goddess Eliatrope, born of Wakfu, and the Great Krosmic Dragon, born of Stasis. They got terribly bored, up there all alone… So they began to, ah, dance.”

“Aw, he’s blushing!” Elely yells. “He can’t even say they had _sex_? Geez, what a—ow, ow, okay!”

“Now, if the audience would shut up, I could tell you that they laid an egg together – an egg of many planets, many galaxies, that would come to be known as our Krosmoz. Even then, they were still lonely, so they laid six more eggs – the first-born Eliatropes and dragons. Shinonome and myself, as well as Chibi, Mina, and Yugo and their dragon siblings, were among those six. Slated to be born again and again, we were to be the caretakers of our race.”

“Well, aren’t you special,” Elely says.

“I’d give my kingdom to shut you up right now,” Katrina replies.

“In any case, the entire history of the Krosmoz happened, the Eliatrope people fell, and now we are here,” Qilby says. He looks a bit shifty-eyed; the Osamodas girl on the bed makes a note to ask Yugo about it later. “What’s unusual is that stasis is where it shouldn’t be. The wakfu resonance around the Zinit should prevent…”

“Okay, whatever, you’ve lost me.” Elely flops dramatically across Katrina’s bed. “Confuse the Iop, it’ll be fun, they said…”

“I hate to admit it, but you’re losing me, too,” Katrina suffers out. “What’s so special about the Zinit that these stasis roses can’t grow there?”

“Well, the entire planet, really…” Qilby seems to have turned inwards, drawing little diagrams on his palm with the index finger of his opposite hand. Katrina gets the distinct feeling he’s talking more to himself than to them. “The World of Twelve is not as wakfu-aligned as, say, our home planet – but it is still closer to Incarnam than Excarnam. This much stasis in one place implies something’s changed, and…”

“Okay, but why were you at the Zinit,” Katrina says blankly. “Your mother would whoop your ass if she knew. Ogrest is still a thing--”

“Had some things to find out,” Qilby says, with a scratch to the back of his head. (Too much time around Chibi has caused him to pick up certain nervous habits.) “I didn’t even get to go in…”

“Uh, _in_?” Katrina asks. “It’s a mountain.” But just as Qilby’s about to start explaining – or, rather, backpedaling – there’s a sharp rap at the door. A raspy voice comes from the other side.

“Katrina! Sis! Chibi and Grougal want to talk to us.”

\---

“So, I overheard something from Yugo and Adamai,” Chibi says. He and Grougal are the unofficial head of the circle that’s gathered, consisting of Elely, Katrina, Qilby, and Shinonome. (Elely’s brother Flopin, a lanky Cra boy with a lazy eye, sits slightly out of the circle, making it look more like a teardrop.) “Time has begun to pass in Emrub again.”

“The hell is Emrub?” Elely asks. Qilby mutters a quiet ‘ _oh, shit_ ’ that nobody really hears.

“It’s… Where do I even…” Chibi sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“It is an alternate dimension, where about ten thousand Eliatrope children from before our Fall are held,” Grougal says – and he’s instantly cut off by a screaming Elely, pointing at Katrina’s nose.

“I told you! I _told_ you, and you didn’t believe me! Who’s right now, huh? Huh? That’s like, so many children!”

“Shut up, shut _up_ ,” Katrina says, tugging at her own ponytail. Her face goes hot, but as her skin is blue, nobody can see it.

“Well, I was right.” Elely puffs her chest out – Katrina doesn’t bother telling her that she’s seventeen now, has impressive tits, and therefore shouldn’t do that anymore – and turns back to the circle.

“Is… Oh, Goddess, do I really want to ask…” Qilby scratches his chin and turns to Chibi. “Is time passing in the Blank Dimension, as well?”

“I would assume so,” Chibi says with a grimace. Qilby’s face quickly twists up in turn.

“If that had been me? Dead.” Qilby makes a slitting motion with his hand across his own throat. “Though, maybe that would have been better. Who knows?”

Chibi doesn’t mention the time when he was fourteen and Qilby had just regained his memories, when he had to talk the scientist down from the edge of a cliff in the Singing Fields; he only shifts a little closer to Qilby and puts a hand on his shoulder. Katrina and Flopin notice something amiss in Qilby’s wry grin, but they don’t ask.

“I don’t think so, Brother, but that’s not the point here,” Shinonome finally says. Her voice is quiet and high; a ruddy-skinned face peeks out from under curly, fiery red hair, like a little girl who’s finally gotten the courage to speak. “We both know how old Baltazar was. If time is flowing again, he’s sure to be close to death—“

“Dead,” Grougal corrects. “Yugo visited this morning, and he had passed.”

“Oh.” Shinonome tugs at one of the curls framing her face. “He has returned to his Dofus, I trust?”

“Naturally.” Grougal smiles. “They took it to Emrub, so he is with Glip again, at peace.”

Qilby turns to Shinonome and whispers, “The old bastard’s coming back to town—“

“ _Brother!_ ”

“And I guess we can’t just leave them in there,” Katrina says, and Elely immediately pipes in.

“Grandpa Ruel told me a story when I was little, about a bunch of kids and a Blibli’s head on a stake…”

“No, stop, I’m gonna hurl,” Flopin grinds out. Qilby looks over to see if he’s just faking it, but he looks legitimately a bit green.

“Yugo said he’s going to deal with getting them out,” Chibi says, head high. Despite the young scientist’s skepticism beside him, he has the utmost confidence in his brother’s ability to get it done. “Our job is to figure out what’s going on that started this mess in the first place.”

“So, first to the Zinit?” Qilby suggests.

“Oh, boy,” Katrina says. “Maybe not.”

“Hey, Katrina.” Elely flashes the Osamodas a thumbs-up. “I bet there’s lots of treasures you could find down by that old mountain… Trophies abound--”

Katrina stands up and puffs her chest out. “I’m in!” she yells. Elely gives Qilby a massive shit-eating grin and mouths, ‘you’re welcome!’

“Well, first, we need supplies,” Chibi says. He’s taken the posture of a leader, well-learned from his older brother, and Qilby gives him an admiring look. (It doesn’t escape Grougal’s notice; the dragon rolls his eyes.) “Maybe a trip to the market is in order…” 

\---

To say Yugo has not aged in the twelve years since his first encounter with Ogrest might be overstating it; he only looks about seventeen, despite being almost thirty-three, but his eyes know more years than his body. Though Chibi is tall enough to look down his brother’s nose now - always a late bloomer, their King was - Yugo carries himself in contrast to Chibi’s slouching ease: a king hardened by years of doubts, seventeen going on seventy. If you look closely, you can see faint but permanent burn-scars spiraling in thick vines up his limbs.

 Today, his nerves are high - in part because of the feeling something is Wrong, but mostly because his little brother, and one of the few family he has remaining, has just stated he’s going out on an ‘expedition’ with the reincarnation of a man who attempted to destroy their entire planet. (And it was all to go to space, of all things.) He keeps cycling worries in his head, one after the other - _what if Qilby goes crazy again? what if he lies about something serious and I’m not there to stop him? Is Chibi really interpreting this weird dream of his right?_

 “Before you go, I need to tell you something about Qilby.” Yugo’s voice is dire, his posture ramrod straight.

“About the Fall, right? He told me,” Chibi says. Yugo raises an eyebrow, then both eyebrows, until it looks like they’re about to shoot into his hairline; his face goes red with confusion. Why would he--

“What… What did he tell you?” Chibi swears he hears in Yugo’s voice, _and why did his memories come back so quickly, before I could tell you myself?_

“That the Eliacube is Orgonax’s heart. That he stole it to try and further the development of our people. That—“

“Orgonax’s heart?”

“Um. Mechasms? The giant space robots? Wait, he didn’t tell you? Oh, is that what he meant by ‘you only have half the story’?”

“This is getting stranger and stranger by the second,” Yugo says. “He said _you_ made it.”

“Well, we both did. Kinda. I didn’t know what the material was, but I did everything mechanical, forged the parts... ” Chibi reaches under his hat to scratch the back of his neck, which suddenly itches like a caterpillar is crawling across it.

“And how do you know he isn’t lying to you about that? How do you know he didn’t just jump to some other story when we found out the first one?” Yugo is red in the face; his fists are clenching.

“Well, what in Eliatrope’s name are we supposed to do?” Chibi yells.

“We go up to the Zinit and figure out the truth for ourselves—“

“Yeah, you’ve been doing a really good job with that, big bro,” Chibi says. Yugo’s face darkens near-instantly, and he ducks his head to where his eyes disappear under the brim of his hat; the younger Eliatrope regrets it instantly. “Shit, Yugo… I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant—“

“No, it’s true. I haven’t been doing what I should… Not for my people, and not for myself. I’m past thirty now; I should have started sooner.”

“But you can’t be blamed for any of that. There’s so much to do – the kids, the politics… Trying to get stuff ready for us again.” Chibi smiles. “So, boss, your job right now is to find out what we’re doing with these kids. We’ll deal with the Stasis thing.”

“At least let Shinonome go with you. She… Stopped him last time.”

“After being separated for that long? I don’t think the twelve gods themselves could break them apart.”

“And we’re keeping the Eliacube here, just to be sure. And don’t let Elely get involved with any rogues, or Eva and Pinpin will _both_ kill me!”

“Just because I had a dream doesn’t make me a miracle-worker.”

Yugo laughs.

 


End file.
